One of the better, if not the best, of the famous screwball comedies of the era, Godfrey stands as an excellent example of witty scripting, direction, and editing.

Top Hat may be more energetic and glossy, but Swing Time is arguably the most magical of the ten films Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made together. Their dancing and acting rapport are at a peak and director George Stevens shows more finesse than Mark Sandrich in lending the couple's rocky romance a genuinely heartfelt quality.

In many ways, this is one of the best biblical films ever done. Mostly because it doesn't preach, just entertains, and in doing that, puts its lessons across with a minimum of effort.

Master director Whale, here essaying his first musical, does some typically marvelous things with the camera and mise-en-scene and gets wonderful performances from his cast.

Powell can't give his shallow role much depth beyond a consideration of Ziegfeld's incredible ambition and ego, but he does give it energy and rascally charm.

This picture was the third remake (out of four) of the Peter B. Kyne story, with its Three Wise Men parallel.

One of the ultimate expressions of Paramount Studios chic, Desire remains one of its desirable star's finest films.

THE STORY OF LOUIS PASTEUR is well told, with an intelligent script, excellent performances, and careful attention to scientific accuracy. Muni offers a fine characterization that shows the famed scientist as a man faced with extraordinary obstacles.

Flynn's star-making swashbuckler is right on target.

One of director Jack Conway's finest efforts, the film never suffers from a sense that the novel has been compressed or rushed. Moving, fresh and aware of its effects, this film stands as one of Hollywood's finest adaptations of a novel.

Expertly crafted and brilliantly acted, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY is one of the most durable and engrossing adventure films ever made.

This fast-moving gangster picture was typical of the Warner Bros. releases of the 1930s: lots of shooting, action, and romance, all crammed into a brief 78 minutes as overseen by supervisor Sam Bischoff who went on to be the producer of such epics as THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE, THE PHENIX CITY STORY, among others.

The fourth pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and the first with a screenplay written specifically for them, Top Hat is the quintessential Astaire-Rogers musical, complete with a silly plot, romance, dapper outfits, art deco sets, and plenty of wonderful songs and dance numbers.

One of Hitchcock's best British films, and a prototype for so much of what would follow in his American career. For those who love a grand spy mystery, a wild chase, and a harrowing portrait of an innocent man struggling to prove his innocence while the world turns inexplicably against him, The 39 Steps is ideal.

While not as poetic or haunting as Edgar Ulmer's The Black Cat, The Raven is a remarkable tale of revenge, and memorable in its own right.

Victor McLaglen gave the performance of his life as the scar-faced betrayer, Gypo Nolan, in this telling adaptation of Liam O'Flaherty's novel, directed by John Ford.

One of the seminal achievements of Hollywood cinema, this brilliant sequel to the original Frankenstein is one of the greatest films of its genre and remains a lasting tribute to the unique genius of director Whale.

It is in this film that Hitchcock showed his development of a theme he would repeat in films to come--the innocent victim suddenly caught up in a terrifying situation with apparently no way out, coupled with breathless chases in popular public places.

Astaire and Rogers persistently upstage the romantic leads, Irene Dunne and Randolph Scott, and they simply fly, largely unburdened by the plot.

Directed with restraint and impeccable taste by Cukor, produced by Selznick, David Copperfield is diverse and satisfying intellectually and emotionally, capturing the unparalleled beauty of Dickens's melancholic truths about life's hardships and human survival.

Highly sentimental social soaper, subtly crafted by director Stahl.

One of the best examples of Depression-era musicals.

This is the sort of yarn that Runyon told well and often: hard-hearted wise guys melting when they have to put aside tough talk and show their true emotions. It'll have you showing your emotions, too.

What really makes The Thin Man an enduring classic, though, is the interplay between Powell and Loy, one of the greatest happily married couples ever to flicker on a screen.

Leisen, who would go on to make Hold Back the Dawn and Lady in the Dark, rarely equalled the splendor of this film.

[An] utterly beguiling film.

Although the lead trio does well enough, the presence of cinema's greatest musical comedy team fairly blasts the screen lovers into orbit whenever either or both of them are onscreen.

A funny, entertaining little film that pales in comparison with the original, but has enough value in its own right.

Most of the superstars in this fascinating but offbeat production are thoroughly unrecognizable, buried under pounds of makeup or smothered in cumbersome costumes.

This unabashedly sentimental adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel remains, to this day, an example of Hollywood's best filmmaking.

A masterpiece...DUCK SOUP is perhaps the best, and funniest, depiction of the absurdities of war ever committed to celluloid.

Few debuts have been as impressive or odd as that made by the voice of Claude Rains in this macabre classic based on the novel by H.G.Wells.

What is so remarkable about THE BLOOD OF THE POET is that Cocteau has created a lasting piece of art, a haunting poem, as exciting today as it was in 1930.

A great supporting cast and Bacon's well-judged direction help make Footlight Parade one of the greatest of the Berkeley extravaganzas.

This early precursor to Sunset Boulevard and The Bad and the Beautiful was so inside that many people outside the movie business didn't catch the nuances, and it still packs a considerable comic punch.

A rare beauty. Noel Coward, in an atypically serious venture, traces 30 years of a British family's life.

The ultimate monster movie and one of the grandest and most beloved adventure films ever made, KING KONG is a film that has given us one of the most enduring icons of American popular culture--a massively destructive but curiously sympathetic giant gorilla whose rampage through New York City suggests, on a psychological level, the re-emergence of repressed desire.

The film that revived public interest in musicals after many early talkie bombs sabotaged the genre, 42nd Street was the first real glimpse of the surreal artistry of choreographer Busby Berkeley.

A deft blend of comedy, action, and romance.

The second pairing of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow is a steamy drama of infidelity, set against an exotic background and peppered with dialog and situations that pushed the boundaries of Hollywood self-censorship as far as they would go.

GRAND HOTEL remains a classic of its kind.

Not a masterpiece but divine all the same. The Marx Brothers bring their special brand of anarchy to the world of college football in this wonderfully madcap comedy.

One of Hawks's undisputed masterpieces, and a landmark in the screen depiction of gangsters.

Although slow-moving and uneven, Freaks is one of Browning's more consistently fine films, a landmark still worth seeing.

A mystical and exotic story of love and destruction, a film for which both star and director became legends.

Easily the best of the many versions of the Stevenson horror classic.

Fitzmaurice directs with great style here and makes the most of the lavish production techniques available to him.

A winding story with no real direction.

Nothing can detract from the power of the most influential monster movie ever made.

One of the Marx Brothers' funniest films, Monkey Business was their first to be written directly for the screen and is noticeably less stagy than earlier efforts.

This early Hitchcock talkie shows none of the mastery that would subsequently make the director an internationally recognized genius.

Fascinating and brutally realistic, THE PUBLIC ENEMY, along with LITTLE CAESAR, BAD COMPANY, and SCARFACE, set the pattern for the gangster films of the 1930s.

A vigorous, manic drama, this Lewis Milestone classic about newspapers and newsmen wonderfully preserves a host of Depression-era attitudes and a glorious headline era.

One of the cinema's greatest and most durable masterpieces.

The atmospheric opening is the best part--moody and full of sinister potential. After that, it's stilted drawing-room talk, variably acted, except for the cultish over-the-top dementia of Dwight Frye. Still, Dracula is the film that started the 1930s horror cycle, secured Universal's position as the horror studio, and made Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi a worldwide curiosity.

Dunne is superb and Cimarron was considered until the late 1940s the finest Western ever made.

The one and only; an unqualified masterpiece and milestone.

Exceedingly stagy and theatrical, even by 1930's standards, but is nevertheless very funny and highly enjoyable.

Perhaps the greatest antiwar film ever made, holding considerable power even now due to Lewis Milestone's inventive direction.

A smash success as a stage play, JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK did not translate well to film, even under the sure hand of master filmmaker Hitchcock.

Grimly realistic and often brutal, it exposes the inhuman conditions and paranoia that deepen criminal resolve among inmates.

Hitchcock's handling of the comic material was praised by contemporary critics, and modern-day fans of his work will see many directorial flourishes that hint at the mastery he displays in later films.

A love triangle played out on the Isle of Man is the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's last silent film, THE MANXMAN, an uncharacteristic example of Hitchcock with tongue out of cheek.

Moodily filmed in an effectively Germanic style, with a neat supporting turn by Calthrop and fine set pieces such as the chase through the British Museum, BLACKMAIL still plays well, and is a suitable precursor to the master director's later work.

This is a crude, shapeless talkie, a technically unsophisticated film in which the sound is static and the camera immobile, with the comedians leaping into the set scenes. Yet the boys are there in all their frenetic glory.

First musical to win Academy Award reeks of mothballs, but is undeniably the basis of perhaps a hundred others. At least there's an old curiosity shoppe charm and a few classic tunes.

It's a startlingly avant-garde cross-examination of modern life, as well as a lesson in the power of filmmaking and an autopsy of its methods.

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC is one of the all-time masterpieces of pure cinema, not only for its unparalleled use of camera movement, composition, and editing, but for its transcendent spirituality and intense emotional impact.

The only silent film to win an Oscar for Best Picture of the year, WINGS was a spectacular tribute to WWI combat pilots.

Adapted from the play by Noel Coward, this dissection of the prejudices of English country artistocrats shows Alfred Hitchcock in fine early form.

An undisputed masterpiece, and that rarest of films that achieves absolute perfection in every area.

By today's standards, THE JAZZ SINGER is mawkish, crudely filmed, and full of schmaltz. Yet it remains fascinating in its historical value, not only for its technical innovation, but because director Alan Crosland took his cameras on location into New York's Jewish ghetto around Hester and Orchard streets and then along the Great White Way of Broadway, showing the colorful, divergent, and now vanished ways of immigrant and show business life.

A vibrant, cinematically radical, and extremely accomplished work which went on to become one of the most celebrated movies ever made.

Harsh and unsparing, Dumont's all-too-believable film charts with breath taking precision the distance between the unencumbered beauty of moving through space and the agony of inexorably falling to earth.